Professor of Classics @UofMaryland; interested in humanism, classics, higher education, and jazz. RTs ≠ endorsements. New book: https://xitter.cf/t.co/mkDLmJUFxo
Kensington, MD
Joined December 2017
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It exists! It exists! Folke Leander’s fantastic philosophical analysis of the New Humanism has finally seen the light of day.
Eric Adler retweeted
Paul Elmer More, a largely forgotten American intellectual who influenced thinkers like T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, believed that human flourishing requires more than freedom to pursue our desires.
It requires the discipline to restrain them.
More called this the “inner check”—the moral capacity to orient our lives toward truth, virtue, and higher goods.
Read more from Michael Lucchese of @LawLiberty in Religion & Liberty Daily.
ALT Surreal illustration of human figures with cosmic elements and text about Paul Elmer More's humanism.
Yesterday was the publication day for Folke Leander's book *The Philosophy of Paul Elmer More*.
The first review of the book has now appeared (from @ActonInstitute), and it does a good job demonstrating why More is worth reading today:
blog.acton.org/archives/1288…
“The most fatal error is to believe that one serves one’s country by calumniating those who founded it.”
—Ernest Renan (1883)
"Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good book."
--John Morley, "Popular Culture" (1876)
"From the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show."
--Thomas Henry Huxley, "The Struggle for Existence: A Programme" (1888)
"All our greatest teachers are always dead."
--Philip Rieff, *Fellow Teachers* (1973)
“It seems likely indeed, that men make themselves miserable by the exaggerated opinion they have of themselves and their kind, and that if they could form a humbler and truer notion of human nature they might be kinder to others and kinder to themselves.”
—Anatole France (1893)
"When man ceases to wander, he will cease to ascend in the scale of being. Physical wandering is still important, but greater still is the power of man's spiritual adventures--adventures of thought, ...of passionate feeling, ...of aesthetic experience."
--A. N. Whitehead (1925)
New in TAPA by me:
"...we must recognize how the elective curriculum shapes students’ souls: It encourages the young to view themselves as customers, who have no way of judging value beyond the criterion of mere popularity."
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/1…
Exciting things brewing at UVA...
NEW Classical Liberal Arts at UVA headed by Jenn Frey & Angel Parham. Ideas founded in friendship; the tradition is being handed on!
as.virginia.edu/news/pilots-…
Folke Leander's book *The Philosophy of Paul Elmer More*, with intros by Claes Ryn and me, is soon to be published (digital: Oct. 2; print: Oct. 7).
Humanism fans: Do yourself a favor and order a copy.
upress.missouri.edu/97808262…
A great point.
We tell kids we want them to be “lifelong learners” then we do everything possible to expedite their education (or schooling) so they can get out into the workforce.
If we truly want kids to grow up to be people who value learning for the sake of learning, maybe we should stop sending them the message that school is just something to get through or an obstacle to overcome before “real life” begins.
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I listened to John Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls," a composition written soon after the tragedy. It's a mournful and affecting piece of music, well worth hearing:
youtube.com/watch?v=bwoasXzL…
Eric Adler retweeted
I was reminded that it’s the fifth anniversary of my favorite stand up comedian’s death. My eulogy from back then in below ⬇️ one of my favorite things I’ve written
"Profane philologists seemed to care more about the use of the ablative absolute or alternative endings of the aorist optative than about the courage of Achilles or the virtue of Cato."
--John T. Hamilton, *Complacency: Classics and Its Displacement in Higher Education* (2022)
Eric Adler retweeted
I have a piece out in "The Point" today, about reason and responsibility in public discourse.
#education
#philosophy
New online, @ScribnerUMCP on recovering the internal goods of academia in the wake of the Arday affair:
thepointmag.com/politics/int…
"When...colleagues inform me that all education is political, I sometimes ask whether all education is not also cultural, spiritual, artistic and moral, and why we never talk about those aspects?"
An excellent piece by @ScribnerUMCP
thepointmag.com/politics/int…
Eric Adler retweeted
Highly recommend my friend @ProfEricAdler he’s written two books about the more and less recent history of classics instruction in American higher ed: Classics and the Culture Wars is post-1945 and touches directly on Bloom. Battle of the Classics is earlier but it canvasses more recent debates about the value of humanities in the introduction.